I'm not usually one to buy on Album art alone. The latest purchase like that happend when I was trying to kill time at a Borders before an Sam Beam concert. The stark black and white contrast of the "Eels with strings live at town hall" caught my eye. It was awesome for the two hour ride home...

I distinctly recall buying My Bloody Valentine's "Loveless" because of the album cover -- had little idea what the record would sound like, but that fuzzy, grainy closeup of the jazzmaster hooked me. Had to have it.

bipedal wrote:I distinctly recall buying My Bloody Valentine's "Loveless" because of the album cover -- had little idea what the record would sound like, but that fuzzy, grainy closeup of the jazzmaster hooked me. Had to have it.

yeah, that's a great image. i keep a lot of CD's in stacks next to my desk, and i tend to put the nicest ones on the top of the stacks. loveless is almost always at the top of a stack...

I was about 8 years old and lived in Mansfield, Ohio. I asked the guy at the record store, ?show me the hardest rock you have.? I remember seeing Ted Nugent (the one with the guitar that morphed into a 2-barraled shot gun), and Boston. Then He showed me a Kiss album, Rock and Roll Over. I got the Kiss.

Pretty much all of the Ipecac Records releases have had really clever/unusual packing and album art. The last Dalek album has all the lyrics screened in a transparent gloss over the top of the (matte) artwork in the sleeve... you can only read them if you hold it kinda sideways against a light source. Really cool.

Tool, of course, pretty much lays out the gold standard for insane CD packaging... that last album, with the stereoscopic images, was pretty goddamn cool.

I spent the extra five bucks to get the flip books that come with the fancier version of Neon Bible.

It's too bad that the CD is a dying medium, because it feels to me like some of the most creative packaging schemes have come up in the last 2 or 3 years. I guess when you don't have the big canvas of LP's, you have to get creative in other ways.

Some of it might seem a little gimmicky, but if you think back to stuff like "Sticky Fingers" and the Velvets Warhol banana thing, it's the same idea. It may not make the album sell any better, but I think that the people that shell out for it feel like they got something a little bit special. I appreciate that.

subatomic pieces wrote:I wouldn't have picked up on the Africa reference if you hadn't said anything. Looks like he's checking to make sure his antiperspirant is working. ;)

I was working in a music shop at the time and it was on the front of the rack for at least a month before I noticed it. I had thought the same! or some weird 'smooth man' pose. then one day it caught my eye and I was just like 'holy shit!'. so I bought it.

kdarr wrote:Some of it might seem a little gimmicky, but if you think back to stuff like "Sticky Fingers" and the Velvets Warhol banana thing, it's the same idea. It may not make the album sell any better, but I think that the people that shell out for it feel like they got something a little bit special. I appreciate that.

[<|>]

speaking of VU, anyone else have the gorgeous black velvet edition of lou reed & john cale's "songs for drella"? love that one! designed by tom recchion, graphic designer, LAFMS alumnus and important figure on the LA underground/experimental music scene.

Pete Drake & His Talking Steel Guitar ForeverTitle alone seems cool to me.
I turn the record over and read the
?Hi Fi Information, ? This Album was recorded monaurally and stereophonically at Bradleys Studio, February 17, 1964. Instruments and mikes were used as follows: Left channel, a Neumann U-47 on vocal group; A U-67 on electric guitar; A Beyer on bass drum. The bass guitar was fed direct to console. Center channel; a Neumann M-49 on the steel guitar. Right channel: a 44BX on the bass; a Neumann U-67 on the drums; a Schoepps CM-61 on the guitar, and an Altec 150-C on the piano. The sessions were recorded at 15 inches per second on an Ampex 351 and 300-3.

(Mid 80's) Probably the only time in my life I bought albums by unheard of artists chiefly because of the 4ad sound of the time and it did not hurt that the 23Envelope designs were such eye candy. Pixies, Bauhaus, Wolfgang Press, Throwing Muses, Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, This Mortal Coil etc...

darfking wrote:
On the other hand, I never bought a Carcass record becuase their covers grossed me out. They became one of my favorite bands a few years ago.

I avoided a lot of metal back in the day, partly because of the cheesy/gross covers, but mostly because of the band photos. If the band had black & white face makeup, pentagrams or fake blood I passed. Now I find those photos hilarious, esp. when there's one really fat dude.

"What you're saying is, unlike all the other writers, if it was really new, you'd know it was new when you heard it, and you'd love it. <b>That's a hell of an assumption</b>". -B. Marsalis